Patience: The First Step in Spiritual Life

When a flower is still in its bud stage, we cannot experience its fragrance and beauty. It first must blossom. There is no point in impatiently tearing it open. We must patiently wait for it to naturally blossom. Only then can we fully experience all its fragrance and beauty. Here, patience is required. An image is hidden in every rock. However only when the sculptor chisels away the unnecessary portions of the stone does the shape of that image become clear. For this to happen, just think how many hours the stone must patiently sit before the sculptor! It is out of this austerity that the beautiful form becomes clear.

Amma is reminded of a funny story someone told her. Just outside of a great temple, on the road, rested a stone. One day that stone said, “I’m a stone. So too is the idol within the temple. Why then does everyone step on me but worship the idol?”

Hearing this, the idol in the temple said, “You only see everyone worshipping me now. However, before getting here, the sculptor landed thousands of blows upon my body with his chisel. At that time, I just sat there motionless and took it. This is why, today, countless people come to worship me.”

It was the stone’s patience that transformed it into something people worship.

To make progress in spirituallife, the most important quality is patience. Everyone knows the story of Kunti and Gandhari. This story provides us with excellent examples of patience and impatience. When Kunti gave birth to a child before she did, Gandhari became upset. She wanted her child to become the king, but her child had yet to be born. She began to panic. She lost her patience. Finally she punched her stomach and gave birth. What came out was just a lump of flesh. She then divided this into 100 pieces and put them in 100 pots. Thus, according to legend, 100 sons were born. She didn’t have patience to wait. The creation born of impatience became the seed of destruction. The child formed from patience gained victory.

We should learn to be a beginner, like a child. Only beginners have patience. Only they have focus. There is a child in each one of us. It’s just asleep. We must awaken it. At present, the ‘I’ in us is just a creation of our ego. But when the ‘sleeping child’ is awoken, innocence will naturally awaken within us as well. We will develop the desire to learn from everything. Then, patience and focus will naturally follow. As the child within us grows stronger, so does our patience and focus. The old ‘I,’ the ‘I’ that was a creation of our ego, cannot remain. My children should always remember to maintain that attitude of a beginner. Then we will become capable of learning lessons from anything, from any place, on any occasion. This will help us to always obtain whatever we need in life. My children must put in effort to maintain the attitude of a beginner throughout their lives. That is the only way to attain real success in life.

These days whenever anyone bares his teeth, we call it a smile. However a real smile comes from the heart. It is only possible to experience and bestow true bliss when one has an innocent heart. For this, we need to awaken our forgotten child’s heart. It must be allowed to grow. To the children who dream of becoming ‘heroes,’ Amma has one thing to say: “Only if you become a ‘zero’ can you become a hero.” Haven’t you heard this expression? This means we have to destroy the ‘I’ of the ego.

Children, the first step in spiritual life is patience. Those who remove the ‘I’ of egoism and develop childlike minds will make progress in spiritual life.